History of Ukraine

Flag of Ukraine	Ukrainian State Emblem

The Ukrainians are believed to have descended from those Indo-Europeans who settled in Eastern Europe. The available archaeological evidence suggests that roots of the pre-Ukrainians may be found in the Trypillya culture which dates from the fifth-to-third millennia BC; there may be some links to other ancient cultures which flourished in the territory of the present-day Ukraine, including the mysterious Scythians.

The pre-Ukrainians maintained trade and culture contacts with the ancient Greek city-states which sprang up on the shores of the southern Crimea in the 7th–6th centuries BC; later, a part of the Crimea was included into the Kingdom of Bosporus which for a period of time was a major rival of Rome in the Black Sea area. The ancient Romans established their outposts in the Crimea, to be succeeded by the Goths and the Huns.

At the end of the tenth century, the city of Kyiv, the date of whose foundation is uncertain (it is safe to place the foundation of Kyiv no later than in the fifth century AD but it may be much older), became the capital of a powerful state, Kyivan Rus. It stretched as far north as the Baltic, as far south as the Black Sea, as far west as the Carpathians, and as far east as the Volga.

In 988, Ukraine-Rus was converted to Christianity, and the Christian culture was conducive to the rapid development of towns.

It was in the 11th century that the language spoken in Ukraine-Rus began to acquire features which later would develop into the Ukrainian language proper.

Kyivan Rus was a bulwark of European civilization, a sort of its easternmost Ultima Thule, at the edge of the Great Steppe, which was roomed by nomads who kept making incursions into the Ukrainian-Rus lands, some of which were widely disruptive and destructive.

The 13th century saw a devastating invasion of the Mongols which dealt a mortal blow to Kyivan Rus which had already been weakened by internal strife, with local rulers vying for power over Kyiv.

Tragic as the invasion was, it did not destroy the Slavic culture as it was upheld in the Halytsko-Volynske Principality in the western part of what used to be Kyivan Rus. This principality proved to be strong enough to withstand the pressure both from the east and from the west, fending off the attempts of the western crusaders to subjugate it. One of its rulers, Danylo, was crowned a king, and his kingdom preserved, to a great extent, the cultural heritage of Kyivan Rus.

A considerable part of Ukraine later came under the domination of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania but preserved much of its cultural originality. The official language of Lithuania in the 15th century was what is called “Old Ukrainian;” the city of Kyiv acquired the status of a free city which it was granted under the Magdeburg Law.

Poland, Muscovy and Turkey, attracted by the fertility of the land and advantageous geographical position of Ukraine, were the neighbours that wanted to establish their control over parts of this country. The Zaporizhian Sich which emerged as a sort of a Cossack state in the area around the southern reaches of the Dnipro River, gradually acquired the status of an upholder of freedom and cultural traditions. In the mid-seventeenth century, after a period of wars of independence fought under the leadership of Hetman (military and state leader) Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ukraine once again emerged as an independent state formation.

In 1654, the hetman, in the face of an imminent invasion from Turkey and Poland, was forced to sign a treaty in the town of Pereyaslavl with Russia which put Ukraine under the protection of the Russian tsar. As later events showed, it proved to be a turning — and tragic — point in the history of Ukraine — Russia was turning into an empire and an independent Ukraine was not something it would tolerate. Only five years after the treaty in Pereyaslavl was signed (the treaty gave considerable rights and privileges to the Ukrainian land owners and nobles, Ukrainian clergy and autonomy for the Zaporizhian Sich Cossacks), a much stricter control was established by Russia over the hetman and the Cossack starshyna (self-government); the number of Russian troops stationed in Ukraine also grew considerably.

In the early 18th century, an attempt of Hetman Ivan Mazepa to break free from the Russian clutches badly failed. The last vestiges of autonomy were done away with; no traces of former liberties were left and serfdom was introduced. At the end of the 18th century, Ukraine was torn apart by Russia and Austria.

In spite of the loss of statehood, prominent cultural figures of Ukraine, and later an ever widening circle of Ukrainian intellectuals, never abandoned the hope of restoring Ukraine’s independence. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw an upsurge of activity in the national liberation movement and a growing national awareness gave the movement the muscle and blood. The First World War triggered revolutions as a result of which three empires collapsed — the German, the Austrian-Hungarian and the Russian. Thus favourable conditions were created for Ukraine to make a bid for independence. On January 22 1918, the Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed a sovereign state, and its first president was Mykhaylo Hrushevsky, an eminent Ukrainian historian, political and public figure.

The period of time from 1917 to 1921 proved to be the years of great trials and tribulations for the Ukrainian people. The Civil War raged in the land with many sides vying for power: the Russian White Guards; the German forces; the Bolsheviks and their Red Army; the Polish army, and the anarchists — there were too many of them for the Ukrainian armed forces to deal with. The situation was further aggravated by rampant banditry and attempts by Britain, France, Greece and Rumania to join the fray and get whatever advantages they could out of the confusion. The successive Ukrainian governments, fighting against overwhelming odds, succumbed and the power was eventually seized by the Russian Bolsheviks, alas not without help from their Ukrainian “comrades.” In 1922, Ukraine became “a soviet socialist republic,” one of several in “the friendly family of nations” — the Soviet Union.

Ukraine had probably never before experienced that much horror as it did being a soviet republic. The 1930s saw the famine of staggering proportions which in 1932–1933 took lives of at least 8 million people; hundreds of thousands intellectuals and “other subversive elements” were either shot by Stalin’s firing squads or exiled to Siberia. The idea was to “liquidate” the very foundation, upon which the Ukrainian national identity could grow into a national liberation movement.

In the 1940s, Ukraine was the hardest hit in the war of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Three million Ukrainians died at the front, and five million perished in the areas occupied by the Nazis. The material damage to Ukraine was estimated to constitute about one thousand billion dollars.

The post-war reconstruction made Ukraine a rather developed industrial and agricultural land; Ukrainian culture was allowed to develop within the boundaries set by the communist regime; on the other hand, any deviation from the official line was fraught with danger of prosecution and imprisonment. Dissidents and “Ukrainian nationalists” continued to be arrested, tried and sent to concentration camps up to 1985.

The 1980s were the time of growing national awareness and social unrest. On July 1990, Verkhovna Rada, Ukrainian parliament, adopted “The Act on State Sovereignty” which was a first step to regaining full independence.